and so we begin.

Welcome to this space, dear ones. It's strange and new for me, coming from over here. It's a beautiful thing, and I'm sure of its timeliness. But there is a strangeness to imagining blogging here instead of where I've always been.So for my first post (my first real, live, I'm-only-blogging-here-now post, anyway), I want to share a poem that I've been pondering for the past few days. I found it as I was reading my "A Year with Rainer Maria Rilke" entry for May 18. The excerpt is from the Ninth Duino Elegy ...A hunger drives us.We want to contain it all in our naked hands,our brimming senses, our speechless hearts.We want to become it, or offer it—but to whom?We could hold it forever—but, after all,what can we keep? Not the beholding,so slow to learn. Not anything that has happened here.Nothing. There are the hurts. And, always, the hardships.And there's the long knowing of love—all of itunsayable. Later, amidst the stars, we will see:these are better unsaid.I'm not good at what is unsaid, to tell the truth. I love my scaffolding of words. I love to trace the shapes of letters and hear the clicking of the keys, to know that somehow I can share what's inside my heart through these small shapes and sounds. But tonight, as I settle into bed at home, taking a deep breath, realizing that I'm embarking on a new journey and I have no idea what it will contain, or where it will bring me, or who I will become, I see what Rilke meant. All of this beginning is unsayable - the hurts and hardships, the love and the trial of loving - and so it must simply be lived.Perhaps this year I will learn how to trust what is unsayable. Perhaps this is a year to learn how to let the silence between words be as powerful as the words themselves.I hope that as you begin this week, dear friends, you trust what is unsaid. I hope that you will hold what is in your hands and love it in the long knowing of love, and trust in it all.all my wild love,hilary